I was recently reading my assigned chapter for my Intro to Psychology class, when I found something about testing that definitely shocked me. The book was explaining a term called the stereotype threat, which is the fear of confirming an observer's stereotype so much to the point that they actually perform the way the stereotype would predict. It gave the example of race on testing. When students were asked to fill out their race before taking a test, African American students performed very poorly, while when they were not asked to state their race, they actually performed better than European American students. The graphs in the book visually showed the drastic differences between the two types of tests given out. I also found a link of a study done by Stanford University that found the same results: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/95/950816Arc5120.html
To me, I think it is absolutely crazy that this affects testing results so much. It makes me wonder if maybe we should wait for students to fill out their personal information until the test is over, because it seems that that original reminder of stereotype can really mess with test results. But then as I think even harder about the subject, it frustrates me more and I wonder why we even need to fill out our gender/race on tests in the first place. For statistics? What will it prove? Won't it only further feed these detrimental results that stereotyping can have on tests?
I really do think that it would be smart just to get rid of this portion of testing for good. It is definitely not needed and it does not help out the students in any way. We should all be viewed as equals on tests and have a fair shot when going into it, especially when it comes to the great emphasis we place on testing.
This is a really interesting topic, one that doesn't get much thought about. It is pretty crazy how things so small such as bubbling in your gender/race can have such an astounding difference in your score. You make a good point that maybe we should wait until the end, but then again all the test taker information is at the beginning. Teachers always remind students to put their names on the test first and then begin so it would be kind of weird if you filled out that information and then just had your ethnicity by itself at the end. Some test takers might not even see it or fill it out. I think it is for statistical purposes like you mentioned which I think serve to promote research and also may spark aid for minority students who succeed on the test. God only knows what the statistics are used for, but I think the statistics are important to have for record keeping.
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